Peter Ackroyd - Shakespeare

For ease of reference I have quoted line numbers from The Complete Works, Original-Spelling Edition , published by Oxford University Press (1986), easily the best modern edition of Shakespeare’s plays. I would also like to express my obligation and gratitude to its editors, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, for providing the closest possible transcription of Shakespeare’s printed words.

I would like to register a more private debt to my assistants, Thomas Wright and Murrough O’Brien, for their help in research and elucidation.

I would also like to thank Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jenny Overton for their invaluable suggestions and emendations and my editor, Penelope Hoare, for her patient work upon the typescript. All surviving errors are, of course, my own.

Chapter One

1 Quoted in David Cressy: Birth, Marriage and Death , page 81.

2 Jeanne Jones: Family Life in Shakespeare’s England , page 93.

3 Robert Bearman (ed.): The History of an English Borough , page 92.

Chapter Two

1 Richard Wilson: Will Power: Essays on Shakespearian Authority , page 71.

2 ibid.

3 ibid.

Chapter Four

1 Caroline Spurgeon: Shakespeare’s Imagery , page 93.

2 ibid., page 98.

3 Jeanne Jones: Family Life in Shakespeare’s England , page 22.

4 ibid, page 33.

5 Keith Wrightson: English Society 1580–1680 , page 149.

Chapter Five

1 Quoted in E.K. Chambers: William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 247.

2 Quoted in Samuel Schoenbaum: Shakespeare’s Lives , page 5.

3 Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 19.

4 P. Hanks and F. Hodges: A Dictionary of Surnames , page 482.

5 Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 375.

6 Quoted in Samuel Schoenbaum: William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 27.

7 Wrightson: English Society , page 52.

8 Quoted in E.I. Fripp: Shakespeare’s Stratford , page 64.

9 Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 14.

Chapter Six

1 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 15.

2 Quoted in Nathan Drake: Shakespeare and His Times , page 99.

3 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire , page 17.

Chapter Seven

1 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire , page 39.

2 Heinrich Mutschmann and Karl Wentersdorf: Shakespeare and Catholicism , page 147.

3 Information in Fripp: Shakespeare’s Stratford , page 31.

4 Quoted in P. Collinson (ed.): “William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment,” in Elizabethan Essays , page 246.

5 Alexandra Walsham: Church Papists , page 78.

Chapter Nine

1 Quoted in Drake: Shakespeare and His Times , page 116.

2 Quoted in Wrightson: English Society , page 19.

3 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 36.

4 Quoted in E.I. Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 74.

Chapter Ten

1 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 65.

Chapter Eleven

1 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, pages 252-3.

2 John Palmer: Molière, His Life and Works (London, 1930), page 35.

Chapter Twelve

1 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 264.

2 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 83.

3 Quoted in B.L. Joseph: Elizabethan Acting , page 28.

4 Stanley Wells: Shakespeare For All Time , page 14.

5 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 264.

6 Quoted in Joseph: Elizabethan Acting , page 11.

7 ibid., page 12.

8 Quoted in Andrew Gurr: Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London , page 80.

9 ibid., page 17.

10 Dennis Kay: Shakespeare: His Life, Work and Era , page 26.

11 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire , page 57.

Chapter Thirteen

1 Quoted in R. Savage (ed.): Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford upon Avon, 1553–1620 , Volume Two, page xlvii.

2 Nicholas Rowe: Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespeare (London, 1848), page 17.

3 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 155.

Chapter Fourteen

1 Quoted in Jonathan Bate (ed.): The Romantics on Shakespeare , page 304.

2 Quoted in Katherine Duncan-Jones: Ungentle Shakespeare , page 14.

3 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, pages 252-3.

4 ibid., page 265.

5 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 81.

6 ibid., page 80.

7 Quoted in C.C. Stopes: Shakespeare’s Warwickshire Contemporaries , page 23.

8 Fripp: Shakespeare’s Stratford , page 2.

9 Quoted in Stopes: Shakespeare’s Warwickshire Contemporaries , page 77.

Chapter Fifteen

1 T.W. Baldwin: William Shakespeare’s Small Latine and Lesse Greeke , Volume Two, page 672.

2 Quoted in E.K. Chambers: Shakespearean Gleanings , page 52.

3 Richard Wilson: Secret Shakespeare , page 57.

4 ibid., page 58.

5 Quoted in E.A.J. Honigmann: Shakespeare: The “Lost Years ,” page 33.

6 A. Keen and R. Lubbock: The Annotator , page 9.

7 Quoted in Ivor Brown: How Shakespeare Spent the Day , page 167.

Chapter Sixteen

1 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 173.

2 Edmond Malone: The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare , Volume Two, A Life of the Poet , page 108.

Chapter Seventeen

1 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire , page 66.

2 Quoted in Wells: Shakespeare For All Time , page 269.

3 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 72.

4 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 191.

Chapter Eighteen

1 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems , Volume Two, page 253.

2 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 195.

3 ibid., Volume Two, page 520.

Chapter Nineteen

1 Quoted in the introduction by E.I. Fripp to R. Savage (ed.): Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon , Volume Four, page xxi.

2 Quoted in Edwin Nungezer: A Dictionary of Actors , page 348.

3 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist , Volume One, page 206.

4 Quoted in Andrew Gurr: The Shakespearean Playing Companies , page 203.

Chapter Twenty

1 Quoted in J.O. Halliwell-Phillips: Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare , page 79.

2 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life , page 101.

3 Quoted in Liza Picard: Elizabeth’s London , page 89.